‘To avert trouble – I became Hindu’: Sidhiqui

NEW DELHI: 33-year-old Mohd Ibrahim Sidhiqui, who converted to Hinduism to marry a 23-year-old women from Jain’s family had asked her against embracing Islam since they had “anticipated trouble”.

“I told her that I didn’t want her to convert. I wanted her to remain what she was. I told her I would do it, because we had anticipated trouble,” Sidhiqui told The Indian Express.

Sidhiqui told the newspaper that he had met the 23-year-old Anjali Jain in 2015, when she was a BCA student at Genesis College at Chhattisgarh’s Dhamtari district, where he worked as a sound engineer. “By 2016, we had fallen in love. I had always told her that I had been married once in 2013, and divorced a year later. She knew everything.”

Siddiqui, who had taken the name of Aryan Arya, embraced Hinduism on February 23 in Raipur and married Anjali on February 25, 2018, as per Hindu traditions.

Their families would not approve of the marriage so they both decided to leave Dhamtari. On June 30 at around 2 am Sidhiqui waited for Anjali but she never showed up.

“She left home and was walking towards the car but a police van picked her up and asked what she was doing out so late…. She didn’t first tell them where she lived, as she thought they would take her back. Despite her protests, the police took her to a women’s centre, and in the morning dropped her home. From that day, her parents didn’t let her out,” he claimed.

The Muslim man Siddiqui filed the writ petition in the Supreme Court after the Chhattisgarh High Court “erroneously declined to direct the release of (his) wife” whom her parents have allegedly held captive.

His petition added that Chhattisgarh HC had given Anjali two options: either live with her parents or be accommodated in a hostel.

He also alleged to be facing threats from Jain’s family and “orthodox members of society” and acccused the police of recording an incorrect statement of hers

On Friday, a Supreme Court bench of CJI Dipak Misra and Justice D Y Chandrachud has asked the Chhattisgarh government to respond to Mr Sidiqui’s petition.